Markets Make Exotic Thai Dishes Possible For The Cook-it-yourselfer

January 31, 1985|By Phyllis Magida.

Twenty years ago in Chicago, if a cook served some rice noodles mixed with fish sauce and sprinkled with shrimp powder and chili flakes, a guest would reach for the bread and butter fast. Today he eats it voraciously, then asks for ``more of this wonderful pud Thai.``

Thai food has invaded our local cuisine; witness the 30 or more Thai restaurants in the area. And many Thai food shops have opened their doors to accommodate Chicagoans who are venturing into this wonderful cuisine.

It`s fascinating to visit a Thai market and see and smell unfamiliar foods. There are long, thin stalks of lemon grass and tiny, round green Thai eggplant. And always, there are large, unripe papaya. These foods are familiar to the Thais who stand squeezing them like we squeeze melons or tomatoes in our local supermarkets.

There are palm seeds and rambutan and rambutan-with-pineapple and sapota and toddy palm and longans in syrup and longans in extra heavy syrup. There are lychees and chili powder and star anise and dried kapao leaf and kaffir lime--a welter of unfamiliar ingredients.

The Thais sweeten their food with palm sugar, a coarse, brown sticky sugar with a caramel flavor. They eat rice and noodles for starch and carbohydrates the way we eat bread. They eat dried fish, fresh seafood, crab, chicken, beef and pork for complete protein; but they eat meat sparingly because of a national reluctance to slaughter animals for food. Coconut milk puts fat and carbohydrate in the diet. And, of course, vegetables such as like long beans (12 inches) for vitamins and fiber and onions and garlic add pungency to food. The fruits are tropical: papaya, longan, sapodilla, jackfruit, mangosteen, rambutan. Green (unripe) mango often is served in salad. An interesting Thai fruit salad can be made from the bevy of canned and frozen fruit available in Thai groceries.

The peppers provide heat and excitement in Thai dishes. There are not only the fresh red and green peppers (the most characteristic chili pepper used in Thai cuisine is the serrano) but the canned pepper preparations--green chili with vinegar, hot pepper with vinegar, ground fresh chili paste, fresh ripe chili paste with onion, sweetened chili sauce, sweet chili sauce, chili paste with garlic and yellow chili sauce and many others--can make the food very, very hot.

Not all Thai food is hot, but a lot of it is, which is why the cuisine is described as a ``hot`` one. The ``heat`` can be controlled by cutting down on the amount of peppers.

Thai food is also a mixture of lots of cuisines: Chinese, Mongolian, Burmese, Cambodian, Portuguese, Dutch, English, Danish, French, Arabian and Indian. Nevertheless, it is very much Thai. According to Jennifer Brennan, author of ``The Original Thai Cookbook`` (Richard Marek Publishers, $14.95 hardcover, $7.95 softcover), one main characteristic of Thais is ``their ability to absorb foreign influences and translate them into something uniquely Thai.``

But as unfamiliar as Thai dishes may seem, the cuisine really includes the same foods eaten in other cultures: salads, soups, appetizers, desserts, rice dishes, sweets and snacks. And noodle dishes. Lots of noodle dishes. For lunch, for dinner, for snacks.

Ingredients for most Thai dishes can be found at Thai markets throughout the city. Following are some locations. Do not worry that you have wandered into the wrong shop when you see Chinese, Japanese, Malaysian, Filipino, Indian, Indonesian or Korean ingredients. Most shops carrying Thai ingredients supply other Oriental items as well.

You should have no trouble locating what you want. Most shopkeepers speak English. And as a group, Thais are friendly, helpful people. You would probably do better to call first to see if certain ingredients are available. We visited the first five Thai groceries listed below. An additional list of some area shops carrying Thai ingredients is included.

Thai Oriental Mart, 1656 E. 55th St., 324-8714. This resembles a florist or plant shop from the outside because the windows are filled with greenery. Inside, the shelves hold all manner of jars, cans, frozen food and fresh produce. Thai owner Daroon Sunsanto also owns the Thai restaurant across the street called Tipsuda restaurant, which he opened two years ago. Thai Oriental Mart has been open eight years and carries ingredients for Japanese, Chinese, Filipino and Korean foods. Open every day.